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General discussion

Digital action shots

Sep 3, 2004 3:27PM PDT

I'm looking for recommendations on a digital camera that would be fast enough to catch action shots of my son's soccer and basketball games. My current digital is just too slow in its response time to catch a quick shot on goal or a fast break lay up. Thanks for any ideas offered.

Discussion is locked

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Re: Digital action shots
Sep 4, 2004 12:34AM PDT

I tried getting some action soccer shots and that is tough. Things move too fast. You can do a better job of following the action if your camera has an optical viewfinder. I gave up trying to follow the action using the LCD screen.

The response time you mention is called shutter lag.
When you press the shutter button, the autofocus mechanism has to achieve focus and that takes the most of the time. Then there is a slight delay 0.2 or 0.1 second to capture the scene.

You can help the situation by following the action and press the shutter button halfway down to achieve focus lock. When the real action occurs, you press the button the rest of the way down.

The newer cameras are reducing the time to achieve focus lock.

One of the fastest I have seen advertised is the Kodak DX7440. They claim 0.2 second total lag time.
By digital camera standards, that is "smokin'".

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Re: Digital action shots
Sep 4, 2004 4:18PM PDT

EOS-1D Mark II camera has a shutter lag time of just 55ms (adjustable to as little as 40ms via a new personal function) and the mirror "black out" time is approximately 87ms at 1/60 or faster shutter speeds, resulting in easy viewing even during high-speed shooting at 8.5 fps.
Review at: http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/1DII/preview.html

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(NT) (NT) The Canon EOS-1D Mark II costs $4,500 without lens.
Sep 5, 2004 12:14AM PDT
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Re: (NT) The Canon EOS-1D Mark II costs $4,500 without lens.
Sep 7, 2004 2:10AM PDT

My reply to previous thread concerened your quote"One of the fastest I have seen advertised is the Kodak DX7440. They claim 0.2 second total lag time.
By digital camera standards, that is "smokin'".
". The original thread did not specify any cost issue. If cost is an issue , then he would be better off buying and using a 35mm camera to capture action shots, then scan in the images.

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Re: Digital action shots
Sep 6, 2004 11:25PM PDT

That's what I want to do as well. Salesman said I could use the movie mode to record the action and then edit, with the software provided, to get just a still of a particular part of the action. Sounds good in theory but I can't figure out how to do it. The software that came with my Casio QV-R51 is Kodak Easyshare, Photohands and Photoloader. Perhaps it just won't do it. Can anyone else do this with their software, or even right in the camera?

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Re: Digital action shots. Movie mode = movies, not stills.
Sep 6, 2004 11:46PM PDT

Take a close look at the movie mode and you see it could be some 320x200 pixel image. You won't be too happy with that for stills.

The Kodak 6490 I have takes some 2 or slightly more shots per second in its burst mode which I find very nice. The 7440 ups the ante with a lower lag time.

I'm giving the nod to the 7440. You may like that one.

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I picked up a 256MB SDCARD for the 6490 and carry a hard disk SDCARD backup unit. I used my old laptop drive (11 GB) and the X-drive II. Next year I'll look to getting a second battery for the Kodak if I stay with it.

Bob

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Re: Digital action shots
Sep 7, 2004 12:52AM PDT

There are several software programs for sale that claim to do this, including Quicktime Pro.

As Bob said, it will be a rather small photo - 320x240.

I found one freeware program that says it can extract a single frame. Program called AVIedit written by Alexander Milukov in Russia.

I have not tried the program.

Link is here:

http://www.am-soft.ru/


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